“Summer skiers now sweep by a patch of white polyethylene as big as a football field against the backdrop of majestic jagged peaks.. It works like a picnic cooler, deflecting the sun while keeping the contents cool.” (Seattle Times/AP)
“Most of Austria’s 925 glaciers have been receding under decades of global warming, prompting researchers and ski-lift operators to seek novel solutions. Here, in the Tyrol region of western Austria, they’re fighting the melt by covering the weak spots with blankets of white plastic or foil that keep the cold in and the heat out.” […]
Older people in Neustift im Stubaital, the Austrian village below Eisgrat, remember their grandparents sending their priest up into the mountains to appeal to God to stop the encroaching glacier. Now they pray for an end to the melt that threatens the jobs of about 1.2 million Tyroleans linked in some way to glacier skiing.
